‘Lovely Molly,’ Directed by Eduardo Sanchez

Lovely Molly

Gretchen Lodge in the title role in “Lovely Molly,” a suspense film by Eduardo Sanchez.Credit
William Gray/Image Entertainment

The smartest decision that Eduardo Sanchez made before shooting his harrowing haunted-house movie, “Lovely Molly,” was to cast Gretchen Lodge in the title role. As a young newlywed and recovering addict living in the creaky rural home where she grew up, Ms. Lodge (astonishingly, in her first film) throws herself into a character required, more than once, to perform tense, dramatic scenes while totally naked. And though the film’s nasty revelations may appear to some viewers as distastefully exploitative, its nudity is handled entirely without salaciousness. Molly may be completely bonkers, but Ms. Lodge makes sure that we feel for her.

Much of the film unfolds through the lens of Molly’s camcorder (a technique, now overdone, that was pioneered by Mr. Sanchez and Daniel Myrick in “The Blair Witch Project”), which she wields obsessively when things begin to go bump — and scrape, and moan — in the night. Her husband (Johnny Lewis), a truck driver, is gone for days at a time, returning to find his fragile wife sinking ever deeper into scabrous childhood memories. Are Molly’s demons in her house or in her head?

Generating suspense without blowing the special-effects budget, Mr. Sanchez paints an intimate portrait of a tormented personality. Though horrors are eventually unveiled, the film is more chilling in its slower, quieter moments: Molly being violated by an unseen force in a deserted workplace corridor, or a slow pan across a wall of sinister family photographs. Though I’m still trying to figure out the point of that maggoty stag.